5 ways to improve your restaurant quality control today

If you’re a restaurant owner, there’s probably one thing that terrifies you on a quarterly basis: restaurant quality control compliance checks.

Restaurant quality control is the lifeline of your business, and running a well-functioning restaurant holds great responsibility. It entails person-to-person and person-to-product contact, and depending on its effectiveness, can even result in life or death.

This is why restaurant owners should use restaurant inspection checklists to prepare for outside inspections:

Ace a restaurant inspection!

Download this checklist and be prepared for outside inspections.

download free checklist

There are key foundational safety measures that you and your team should stay on top of to ensure that your restaurant is among the top ranking for restaurant quality control compliance checks in your region.

In this piece, you’ll learn a few easy ways you can improve your restaurant’s quality control, so you can streamline your approach to quality control and compliance.

1. Implement frequent updates and reminders to your cross-contamination policy 

Cross contamination is among the top reasons why restaurants fail compliance checks, or worse, shut down completely. There’s little margin for error.

One of the best ways to stay ahead of this is through educating your staff on the causes and effects of cross contamination. After all, a refresher is never too frequent for something so crucial. Show them how food contamination spreads (bacteria transfers from raw foods to prepared foods through direct or indirect contact). 

Assuming your team has an existing policy to avoid cross-contamination, it’s worth finding ways to tighten this policy each quarter. For example, your team might go from washing your cutting boards before and after each use to expanding and color-coding your cutting boards—red for raw and blue for cooked or prepared food—to designating separate rooms for raw and prepared food altogether. 

Key questions to ask may include:

• How visible and engaging is the signage in your restaurant’s kitchen? 
• Do they remind your team to wash their hands in between each stage of preparing meals? 
• Is signage visible in every nook of your work spaces or does it easily go unnoticed? 

It’s also important to have your leadership encourage staff to look out for one another to ensure that the cross-contamination policy established in your organization is upheld.The main thing to remember here is that consistency is key.

2. Create a collaborative and immersive work culture among employees

A collaborative team and healthy work culture garner great results across the board. They fill operational gaps within a business quickly and efficiently.  

Key questions to ask may include:

• Are your team members comfortable with one another? 
• Are the people within your work environment honest and open enough to share their thoughts and opinions? 
• When your team isn’t operating at full capability, are people quick to help each other and own up to their mistakes, or do they blame one another and sweep their faults under a rug? 

The point is clear: collaboration requires correction and trust. Teammates will only be as helpful as they feel supported, and as vulnerable as they feel heard. So how do you achieve this?

Build an environment that recognizes and promotes concern for your employees’ well-being and comfort. When you fill their tank in this way, they will perform their best on the job. 

Reassure the departments within your organization that they are an integral and appreciated aspect of your team’s overall operational success. Like a domino effect or a production system in a factory, each station performs a duty that pours into the next step, and so forth. In the same way, the responsibilities within one department of your restaurant will greatly affect the next. 

Create an inviting and uplifting environment that is committed to failing forward, learning, and growing together. 

3. Encourage intrapreneurship within the workplace

If you’re reading this, it’s likely that you’re a restaurant manager, a representative of a high-end restaurant company, or a health safety compliance officer. You may feel the pressure lay solely on your shoulders to display operational excellence within your organization, but the reality is, it doesn’t.

The overall performance of your restaurant’s quality control depends on each stakeholder within your core team. 

Encourage your team members to unveil their inner expert while on the job. Give them the greenlight to analyze the daily responsibilities, expectations, and goals connected to their roles. Allow them to evaluate themselves and their colleagues, and ask them to provide recommendations for improvement. To show your appreciation for their help, thank employees through a rewards program, or with a tangible gift from the company. 

Your job is demanding. You can’t be everywhere at the same time, so what better way to cover the bases than to have the individuals in each department evaluate themselves? If you hold each other accountable while maintaining the integrity of your restaurant, you will see an increase in your customer satisfaction and sales.

4. Invest more time into industry education 

Allocate more time to holding educational workshops for internal teams to sharpen their skills and understanding of their responsibilities.

The real cost, in this case, isn’t money. It is the investment of time. 

Give employees access to the latest knowledge concerning your industry, like the best branded ingredients or resources to use in your restaurant. Provide them access to updated, evergreen training programs that allow them to develop a better understanding of your consumers’ needs and expectations. 

A great way to achieve this is to have your client service team compose a creative solution that educates your employees both theoretically and practically.

Implementing workshops can come with a hefty cost, but the time spent investing in your employees will guarantee a meaningful return.

5. Use collaborative restaurant inspection software

Invest in intuitive inspection software to help you easily make it through your list of deliverables.

Take a moment to think about the most popular immersive tools and technologies of our day: G-Suite, Adobe Creative Suite, Office 365. What makes them so unique and user-friendly? It’s the fact that everything is in the same place, working together to produce one outcome. 

You should want this for your internal team, too.

Replace your clipboards, bulletin boards, and thick binders with technological software that hosts all of the content your team needs to track and report while on the job. 

Improve your business workflow by streamlining your operational process, use a restaurant quality and safety checklist, and invest in restaurant inspection software:

Ace a restaurant inspection!

Download this checklist and be prepared for outside inspections.

download free checklist

monitorQA is a mobile inspection software designed for teams just like yours. Our app helps simplify your audit process prior to scheduled restaurant quality control compliance checks. It’s flexible and customizable approach to digital internal inspections is beneficial for small, medium and large teams looking for an easier approach to restaurant quality control.

Equipped with a smart audit form builder, data-rich dashboard, snapshot feature, and so much more, monitorQA will streamline your business’s workflow, save your time, and provide your team with operational intelligence. 

The present is digital, why not stay ahead of the curve?

Gain full visibility into your restaurant quality control processes

Restaurant quality control should be a daily effort. Compliance checks may be quarterly, but empowering your team to commit to daily maintenance and improvement could be a gamechanger for your organization.

Seasonal compliance checks don’t have to be terrifying, you just need to stay ready. 

Are you looking for an easier way to stay on top of restaurant quality control? See why restaurants love using monitorQA for inspections, audits, and more.